


You Can't Blame Me For Feeling Amorous

by ifeelbetter



Category: Inception (2010)
Genre: Alternate Universe, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-10-08
Updated: 2010-10-08
Packaged: 2017-11-12 02:04:56
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,463
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/485460
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ifeelbetter/pseuds/ifeelbetter
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>50's-movie-musical!AU. Everyone is working on a new picture but Eames is making doe eyes at the wrong person. Arthur might not object all that much.</p>
            </blockquote>





	You Can't Blame Me For Feeling Amorous

**Author's Note:**

> This started as a dare from jenna_marianne in the comments to a different fic and our mutual love for Gene Kelly and Donald O'Connor. And then she mentioned [that time Gene Kelly did a tap routine on roller skates](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Aus1PA5-SyI) and I re-watched [An American In Paris](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8aWRmnje-Sk) and...this happened. It ought to be more...organized. Or something. Or not exist at all, even. 
> 
> Also important to the writing of this fic: Donald O'Conner and Gene Kelly's [1960 TV Special](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9fotT7IlQZg&feature=related) of adorableness. 
> 
> In short: I don't know what this is. It just...is. It's just a series of scenes because I have no comprehensive narrative to offer. Just fluff. And musicals.

*** 1 ***

Dom said something in a low groan but his hands were covering his face so neither of them could understand what he said. 

“Dom. Use your words,” Arthur said, raising an eyebrow. 

“I said,” Dom repeated, moving his hands out of the way but only far enough to scrub his eyes in frustration, “Could we do _one_ scene where it looks like Eames is in love with the girl?”

“He’s casting aspersions on my character,” said Eames.

“He’s casting aspersions on your skills as an actor,” Arthur corrected. 

“I’m just asking whether it would be possible for you to stop making moon eyes at Arthur for _five minutes_ so that I can shoot my damn scene?” Dom said through gritted teeth. 

“It’s your own fault, you know,” Ariadne said, perched on the edge of her stool. “You wrote a scene with a love song for the two of them.”

“They’re supposed to be bonding about how much they love _other people_ ,” Dom pointed out. “They’re not supposed to be singing to each other.”

“It’s Gershwin,” Eames said, “You can’t sing Gershwin without looking a little in love.”

“Try looking at Yusuf instead of each other,” Dom said. 

Yusuf looked up from where he had been picking a tune out of the upright piano. He looked horrified at the suggestion. “I strongly object to being forced into the middle of this.”

“You’re already in the scene. Try doing it like you’re telling Yusuf all about how much you love the women.” Dom waved at one of the cameramen. “Just, for the love of God, don’t look at each other.”

“I’m going to have to look at him at some point, Dom,” Arthur said, matter-of-factly. 

“Just don’t flutter your eyelashes and we should be fine,” Dom said. Arthur opened his mouth to protest but Dom insisted, “And we’re rolling in 5….4….3…2…”

Later, when Arthur and Eames watched the footage from that day, they had to agree. They really had made a love scene out of the love song. It was Dom’s fault, though, for giving them “S’Wonderful” and setting them in a Parisian café. 

*** 2 ***

The second time they had to be stopped from re-routing the romantic plotline was also entirely not their fault. 

The whole film was totally just an excuse to get Eames dancing and choreographing anyway. When his agent had mentioned the film to Arthur in the first place, he’d called it Eames’s project. (Dom had objected strongly.) There was the longest dream sequence ever at the end of the film—a full twenty minutes of some sort of French post-Impressionist inspired ballet-tap infusion—and that was just because Eames negotiated into his contract. 

So he spent hours before, after, and (sometimes) during filming puttering around the set, trying out different things that eventually found their way into the dances. And if Arthur liked to hang around the outskirts of the set while he was puttering, that was his own business. 

The fact that Arthur played some decent piano himself was one of the best kept secrets in business. But Eames pushed and prodded and, without ever actually trying, wiggled the secret out of him. 

The filming for the day was long over and there were only a couple of people finishing up around the set. Eames was trying to figure out the comedic number from the latter end of the film. Arthur could tell he was suffering from the lack of the music—it was part of Eames’s claim to fame that he was married to the musicality in his choreography—and it wasn’t all that hard to slide into Yusuf’s normal seat.

He got through a couple of measures before he realized that Eames had stopped dancing and was standing just behind his elbow. 

“Is there nothing you can’t do?” Eames asked. 

Arthur let the chord sit in the air, his foot sitting heavily on the pedal. 

“I’m telling Dom,” said Mal, appearing from somewhere beyond the wall of cameras, “and that’s going in this picture.” She whipped around in a cloud of mink and disappeared as suddenly as she appeared. 

“Dom’s not going to like this,” Arthur said.

“At least he won’t whine about it if it comes from her,” Eames pointed out. He leaned slightly towards Arthur, his elbow bumping against Arthur’s shoulder. “Do ‘S’Wonderful.’”

Arthur rolled his eyes but he did play it. And Eames did a soft-shoe behind him and all he could hear was the shuffle and tap of his feet against the wood floor. 

***3***

“Mal, darling, I love you and all,” Eames said, dropping her hand, “but can’t you do it more…” He wiggled his fingers in a circle above his head. 

“Have pity on my limited understanding of your English ways,” she said, a hand perched on one hip, “And use language, not absurd gestures.”

“I don’t even know what—“ Arthur repeated Eames’s obscure gesture “—means.”

“Just watch,” Eames said and, without any sort of warning, grabbed Arthur’s hand and pulled him in. 

“Eames, what are you—“ Arthur started to protest but Yusuf was beginning the lead-in and Eames’s hand was on his hip. It seemed rude to not fall in line at that point. 

Matching Eames step for step seemed obvious and right and Arthur didn’t question it, really, at all until Eames was dipping him at the end of the song. 

“I really don’t know why you bothered have me in this picture at all,” Ariadne pointed out. 

Mal watched Arthur straighten up. “I really don’t know that I’ve ever seen another man who could bend like that,” she mused. 

Arthur blushed and (probably) not because of the way Eames’s hand lingered on the small of his back. 

***4***

The day after filming wrapped, it rained in biblical proportions. The sky was grayer than Arthur thought should be possible outside of a black-and-white film and it sapped his spirits. 

That, or the end of filming had ended his easy excuse for hanging around in the outskirts of Eames’s rising star. 

The knock on the door interrupted his moody reverie but he brought his sullenness to the front hall, ready to reprimand the milkman for ignoring the new doorbell again. He didn’t really expect to see Eames on his stoop and definitely wasn’t prepared for soaked-through-but-still-grinning Eames on his stoop. 

“If you start singing, I’m calling the cops,” Arthur said. 

“I’ll have you know that critics agree that my ‘Singing in the Rain’ number re-invented modern romance,” Eames said. “But I promise not to sing if you let me in. I won’t dance, even.”

Arthur tried to look put-upon as he stepped to the side, making room for Eames to brush past him. 

“Why on earth do you have roller skates?” Arthur asked, catching sight of the pair that Eames had hooked over one shoulder. 

Eames just shrugged. “It’s an idea for a new number.”

Arthur tried hard not ask but the question seemed to erupt without his control. “What’s the number?” he asked. 

“I’m going to tap in the skates,” Eames said proudly, “I was working it out in the street.”

“In the rain?”

Eames shrugged again. “I didn’t plan it that way.”

“…you can tap in skates? In the rain?”

There was just enough of the challenge in Arthur’s voice to encourage Eames and Arthur knew it. And there was just enough of the _whatever_ in Eames to pull Arthur, by the hand, back out the door onto the stoop. He sat—in a puddle—to strap the shoes on while Arthur’s hair began to curl at the bottom, the rain dripping from his eyelashes. 

Eames really did glide down the street, sending sheets of rainwater against the curb when he cut his turns too close. Arthur didn’t mind getting soaked from where he was leaning against a lamppost. 

Eames grabbed the pole behind Arthur’s head and spun around it, wrapping him closely.

“This California dew is just a little heavier than usual tonight,” Arthur said, quoting the famous scene from Eames’s most famous picture. 

“Really?” Eames responded according to the script, “From where I’m standing, the sun is shining all over the place.”

“This,” Arthur said, leaning closer, “is a truly terrible idea.”

“Absolutely,” Eames agreed. “But isn’t it marvelous?”

Arthur would have rolled his eyes at that at any other time but his eyes were closed at the time and there had only been that breath of distance between their lips anyway. And they were both romantics at heart—they wouldn’t be making the films they were making otherwise, they wouldn’t have room for that soppy kind of song otherwise—and the scene was too perfect to resist. Even if Eames had an extra inch or two on Arthur from the roller skates.


End file.
